Whether you’re freelance, are paid every two weeks, or simply have irregular commission-type income, it’s often difficult to budget when you aren’t sure how many dollars are coming in each month. This post was inspired by a friend of mine who was discussing coupled finances. Her husband was paid every two weeks, she was paid twice a month, once on the 15th and again on the 30th/31st.

(Click to continue reading…)

I’m about to get married in a few months and I’ve actually been asked, on multiple occasions, whether we plan on having a prenuptial agreement (technically a prenuptial accord) and the answer is No (and no I didn’t need to think about it ). We’re in love, we’re happy, we’re planning the rest of our lives together… but that’s exactly why now is the perfect time to discuss/negotiate and sign a prenuptial agreement (though we never really discuss the idea seriously, we just assumed we weren’t getting one).

(Click to continue reading…)

One of the things I’ve been looking at lately, given the upcoming wedding, was how to optimize our insurance policies because, as we all know, multi-policy discounts are one of the best ways to get a discount. Two auto insurance policies with one insurer generally costs less than two separate auto insurance policies with two different insurers. In actuality, only the medical and auto insurance policies can be optimized because you don’t really share any others. Anyway, I was taking a look at our options and here’s what I came up with.

(Click to continue reading…)

When I went to college, all I took with me financially was $500 and a laminated ID card from my local credit union. I had no idea what credit cards were, I didn’t really understand the idea behind loans other than the fact that I had the maximum of Stafford Loans, but I did know I’d be perfectly alright because my room and board were taken care of. I had a meal plan with the school and I had all the “stuff” I really needed (clothes, books, computer, etc.) so I was well prepared for school. While I wasn’t poor, not any more poor than your average college student, my resources were just scarce and scarcity educates like no other.

(Click to continue reading…)

A few weeks ago I talked about how we handle our coupled finances but didn’t mention the alternatives that we decided against and why. In many instances we’re talking 1A and 1B, none of these alternatives are clearly or totally inferior to our system in any way, shape, or form; it’s merely that we decided to go with the system that we’re working with now. I’ll break down coupled finances as we did before, into the three systems of Where The Income Goes, How We Pay Bills, and How We Save and detail the alternatives that we didn’t go with.

(Click to continue reading…)

Whenever you pool resources, as we do in our main account (read about how we handle our coupled finances), you generally want to discuss anything major with all the parties involved. With coupled finances, it’s not that much different.

While we’ve never spelled out how we discuss and decide on purchases, I think the ad hoc system we do have in place works well and it’s broken up into two phases. Now, these things are only important for major purchases, for minor purchases we don’t really discuss it beforehand but we certainly shop around to get the best price.

(Click to continue reading…)

In the past I asked whether married couples should combine their finances, knowing full well that my fiancee and I have had our finances combined for quite a while now, and I’ve also received emails as to how it is that we handle the whole coupled finances thing – who pays the bills, who balances the checkbook, who does whatever. Part of the fun of personal finance blogging is the fact that you can peek through someone’s financial keyhole and see what they do, so I’m going to show you.

(Click to continue reading…)

I think there is still an overwhelming belief in American society, despite how far we’ve come in gender equality (19th amendment, women’s suffrage, is less than a hundred years old), that the male is the breadwinner and the female is the homemaker – which leads to some consternation when the female out-earns the male. Despite the gender neutral title, I think this question is more acute if you’re in a heterosexual relationship and you’re a guy who comes from a more fairly traditional family with a single breadwinner, your father. (I don’t know the dynamics of homosexual relationships, but it would be nice if someone from Queer Cents could share their two cents on this)

(Click to continue reading…)